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Thursday, 13 November 2014

Back to the Classroom -- NOT about school visits

It was 2011. I was a
full-time teacher with one novel published and prize-winning, and another due
the following year. I had just signed up for an Arvon YA course with Celia Rees
and Linda Newbery, and I was so excited that I shared the information with an acquaintance
who was an aspiring writer. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t like that, being told
what to do. I would never go to something like that.’ She remains unpublished. (And
by the way, the course was amazing, and many of us are still friends, with
several now published or well on the way.)

all will be revealed...

This isn’t a contribution to
the Can Writing be Taught debate: it’s
my experience as both learner and teacher that talent can’t be influenced by a
teacher or mentor or contact with others, but that many elements of craft and
language-awareness can.

I love learning. I was a
swot at school and I worked and played hard at university (four degrees at two
universities). When writing became a big part of my life, it was natural to me
to seek out places where I could learn about that too.

Back in 2001, I signed up
for a course called Novel Writing at the local FE college. I had, then, a very
rough unfinished first draft of an unpublishable novel, whose progress was
erratic because back in those days I used to write ‘when I felt like it’ or
‘when I was inspired’. (Shrieks of silent mirth.) The very first thing the
tutor gave us was an exercise in the correct use of the semi-colon. I had a PhD
in English and to be honest, I was a bit offended. Surely, I thought, people on a novel writing course don’t
need basic punctuation lessons? (OK, more shrieks of silent mirth: I was young
and naïve.)

Despite the bad beginning,
the course was useful, if for no other reason than that it gave me an incentive
to make weekly progress, and introduced me to the importance of giving and
receiving feedback. Now, when I meet and mentor aspiring writers I always
encourage them to seek out something similar, and I often feel annoyed at their
(not infrequent) reluctance. Don’t they know how lucky they are, I fume, to
have access to so many courses? I give them Arvon brochures and tell them
honestly how my first Arvon course taught me more about writing than a
subsequent M.A. in Creative Writing.

Recently I was interviewed
as part of an initiative of the NI Arts Council to identify areas of need for
arts professionals, and the main thing I could think of was the need for
professional development for published writers. There are plenty of courses and
mentoring opportunities for aspiring and emerging writers, but anything beyond
that tends to be generated by writers themselves, often informally. Of course
there must be writers who feel they don’t need professional development, and
good luck to them, but I’m sure there are many like me, with a few successful
books under our books but no idea how things will work out in the future, who
would love to be able to keep on learning. After all, professional ballet
dancers take daily classes; athletes train. Yes, of course I learn on my own.
Every book I read – and write – teaches
me something. But there is something magical about being in a class, with a
wise guide, and other learners to share experiences with.

Books are wonderful, but
sometimes you need people. I’m teaching myself the guitar: I’ve always sung but
this is my first attempt at learning to accompany myself. I have a reasonable
ear, so I wince and try again when it sounds horrible, and I have made
progress. After six weeks, when I could play a song all the way through at
normal speed without embarrassing gaps while I fumbled for the next chord, I
let my stepfather (a brilliant guitarist) hear me. My chord changes were grand,
he assured me – but my strumming was wrong. I had been so focussed on the more
difficult thing that I hadn’t realised how badly I was doing something equally
important. If he hadn’t shown me, I would never have known – even with a
lifetime of watching other people play. Even with a good Teach Yourself Guitar book. Sometimes you need people.

sometimes you need people

That’s why I was so thrilled
when, last week, Arvon announced a course especially for its own tutors. I
signed up immediately and, given that it’s in January, I’m just praying not to
be snowed in, so that I can go and be a student again.

Yes, I love learning new stuff, whether about writing or anything else that interests me. The Cornerstones course I went on (run by Helen Corner and Lee Weatherly) was brilliant and, I'm sure, helped me to get published. (I self-published for several years.) But the main people I've learned from recently are my editors at Orion. Having editors you trust is like going on the best writing course ever, and I think it's one of the the main advantages of being a published author.

I totally agree. There is always something new to learn in writing - which is not to say everyone should use the same "correct" method. Speaking to and sharing with other writers is invaluable. And I'm with you too on knitting, Adele - there's always so much to learn here too. Equally, sometimes the "wrong" way works perfectly well. To stick with the knitting analogy, it was only when I started to teach knitting that I realised that most people make a slip knot when starting. (I've always just tied a half reef knot. I still do and it works for me. I defy anyone to tell from the finished product.) I can remember Sara Sheridan talking about how she got her first publishing contract, by going about it in completely the "wrong" way - but it worked for her.

Interesting post. I'm with you on the need for courses that will help authors develop and maintain their careers after their first book is published... especially how to remain published and earn a living from their books, which I suspect (in my more cynical moods) is quite a different matter from developing professionally or creatively!

I suppose the ideal would be a course that brings both elements together, since there isn't a lot of point in developing your skills as an author if nobody is publishing your books any more?